Day: Status Icons and GNOME [LWN.net]

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 1, 2017 21:04 UTC (Fri) by johncktx (guest, #113610) [Link] (18 responses)

One would think if they recognize when something isn't a good solution and their general attitude is to remove such things, that the entire Gnome 3 branch would be removed so they could return to developing Gnome 2.

Gnome can't be taken seriously at all these days. Hopefully Gnome 3 stops its charade soon and, as gracefully as they can muster, just wind the failed project down and use it as a teaching method for how not to develop a desktop and/or respond to criticism. I once thought it might be able to be salvaged, but those days are long since gone.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 2, 2017 22:27 UTC (Sat) by sramkrishna (subscriber, #72628) [Link] (16 responses)

I don't know by what measure you believe that GNOME has failed as a project since it is the default in most distros. There are other desktops that use the GNOME stack. More than that, we have lead the cultural change of adding designers to free software software model for consistent look at feel. I am proud of these achievements.

GNOME doesn't believe in sacred cows, and yes, the work we do can be disruptive culturally. It's why I stay on this project for nearly 20 years and enjoy being part of the GNOME community as there is always fresh ideas to work on.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 3, 2017 0:00 UTC (Sun) by dirtyepic (guest, #30178) [Link] (8 responses)

As a desktop it's not your job to be culturally disruptive. It's your job to be a stable platform for third-party applications to run on.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 3, 2017 1:38 UTC (Sun) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (2 responses)

By your logic, we should all be using CDE..

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 4, 2017 2:45 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

You think it must be one or the other? There's no middle ground?

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 8, 2017 1:40 UTC (Fri) by efitton (guest, #93063) [Link]

I wonder where we would be if we had had twenty four years of incremental improvement to CDE. Especially with the ability to take ideas that had proven successful from experimental/other desktops. I'm guessing we would be much further along than the constant rewrites and re-imaginings of desktops that market themselves as for the mainstream while simultaneously claiming to be experimental and disruptive.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 6, 2017 12:51 UTC (Wed) by jani (subscriber, #74547) [Link] (4 responses)

"As an X it's not your job to be Y. It's your job to be Z."

Since when has it been okay to tell people what to do, unless you're paying them to do what you want?

The GNOME folks seem to have strong opinions about where they want to take the project, and aren't afraid to make it happen, even if the changes are disruptive. The world is full of projects like that, open source or not. Arguably you need people and projects with strong vision to improve the way we work. Indeed some of the more interesting and disruptive projects are lead by rather opinionated people. (Intentionally not naming any.) Some of the disruptive changes are going to make some users unhappy.

But the people doing the work are free to do so.

You are free to move on to something else. You are free to start or fork or contribute to a desktop environment project with a kernel-like no regressions policy.

Of course, there's also the option of complaining about the state of GNOME 3 on LWN, but isn't that subject growing a tad stale? GNOME 3 is something like six years old now, and there are no signs of it becoming irrelevant despite what you might think based on the comments on this article.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 7, 2017 16:58 UTC (Thu) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

>Since when has it been okay to tell people what to do, unless you're paying them to do what you want?

Let's rephrase that in gnomespeak[1], then:

“It's time to decide whether GNOME wants to be a useful desktop, a Linux desktop, or a GNOME desktop.”

[1]: https://trac.transmissionbt.com/ticket/3685

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 8, 2017 1:43 UTC (Fri) by efitton (guest, #93063) [Link] (2 responses)

If they want an experimental and disruptive desktop; more power to them. However, it then seems inappropriate to try and become the default desktop and market yourself for mainstream use. If you want to be the default, mainstream desktop then I absolutely agree with don't be disruptive.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 8, 2017 11:55 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (1 responses)

Distributions put GNOME as the default because of various reasons. Pretty much what we're doing resulted in GNOME being the default on various distributions. That quite conflicts with your notion.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 8, 2017 20:09 UTC (Fri) by efitton (guest, #93063) [Link]

I didn't even speculate on why GNOME is a default option on many distributions. If I did, it would probably be along the lines of poor choices by KDE, the prior popularity of GNOME 2 (inertia being a powerful force), and some peoples beliefs that version 3 must be better than version 2 because 3 > 2. I'd also speculate that the popularity of MINT is mostly because of Cinnamon and that GNOME Shell still seems less than universally loved.

What I meant to say:
1) At least some core GNOME members see GNOME as a place for experimental design. At least some core GNOME members see GNOME as culturally disruptive. This seems pretty well documented, although perhaps not the view of all core GNOME members.
2) At least some core GNOME members desire to see GNOME as a default or the default Desktop Environment. This also seems well documented.
3) My personal opinion (which might be a small minority opinion for all I know) is that trying for both an experimental desktop and being _the_ mainstream desktop is at best inconsiderate to users.

Obviously different people may have different opinions than me as to why GNOME is frequently a default and different people may have different opinions on the appropriateness of having an experimental and mainstream desktop.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 5, 2017 18:53 UTC (Tue) by bandrami (guest, #94229) [Link] (5 responses)

"since it is the default in most distros"

It's default in Fedora, RedHat, and their derivatives. Is it the default anywhere else? It's not default for Mint, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Arch, Slackware, Antergos, Manjaro, or Gentoo (to use distrowatch's hit counter as a proxy for userbase). It's one of four defaults for Debian. MATE, Unity, and Cinnamon (all of which are Gnome forks made by people who were unhappy with the direction Gnome has been going) seem to be doing a lot better than Gnome.

A decade ago, Gnome 2 really *was* the default in most distros, and Gnome 3 seems to have thrown that away.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 6, 2017 6:31 UTC (Wed) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link] (2 responses)

You do realise that Ubuntu just dropped Unity, do you?

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 6, 2017 9:48 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

Not just that, but Ubuntu was responsible for a considerable amount of Linux's desktop fragmentation by their forking of Gnome to create their soon-to-be-abandoned Unity desktop, well before Gnome 3 was released?

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 6, 2017 13:04 UTC (Wed) by bandrami (guest, #94229) [Link]

Bluntly, I believe Canonical when it ships and not before, at this point.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 6, 2017 9:54 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

> It's one of four defaults for Debian.

That made me snicker. Thanks.

> MATE, Unity, and Cinnamon (all of which are Gnome forks made by people who were unhappy with the direction Gnome has been going)

Of those, only MATE is a legitimate "fork".

Cinnamon is all Gnome3 under the hood, only using a different shell to provide a G2-like UI.

Unity was an originally an incompatible fork of prerelease-G3, because (officially) Canonical wasn't willing to wait for G3 to be finished, and because they had specific UI requirements in mind -- not because G3's direction was inherently wrong. Even today, it's far closer to G3 than Cinnamon is.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 7, 2017 3:07 UTC (Thu) by bandrami (guest, #94229) [Link]

> That made me snicker. Thanks.

I definitely enjoyed it, too.

That said: a decade ago, choosing "desktop system" in the Debian installer got you Gnome. Now it gets you a choice of Gnome, the old version of Gnome by another name, the new version of Gnome hacked up to look more like the old version of Gnome, or a desktop that is basically the old version of Gnome but with a much greater willingness to use external components.

Ubuntu coming back into the fold will be a big plus for Gnome, but I still am amazed at how much installbase the team has been willing to give up here.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 6, 2017 18:43 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Agreed, the GNOME project does appear to be optimized for developer happiness. They certainly do ensure there are always fresh ideas to work on!

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 3, 2017 16:30 UTC (Sun) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link]

Surely. We will all switch to the Unity 8, no?

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 1, 2017 21:31 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (2 responses)

I had to check twice that the article wasn't a beautifully written parody. The number of things he says with a straight face and then contradicts a few paragraphs later... It's really funny! Loved it.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 2, 2017 20:58 UTC (Sat) by sramkrishna (subscriber, #72628) [Link] (1 responses)

Example? Curious to see where the message has gone awry. I helped review the blog post before it went out.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 2, 2017 23:57 UTC (Sat) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Well, I'll try...

> Another key design principle for GNOME is to put the user in control.

I LOL'd. This article's whole apologetic tone is precisely because it's giving users the shaft. If the GNOME project wanted to put the user in control, it would would first implement (and test!) a solution so this long article wouldn't have to exist. It would just be an entry in the release notes.

> In the next release, we will be introducing a new integration API for file synchronisation apps

Except... the reason you need the API is in *this* release, isn't it? (or am I misunderstanding "next"? Think there'll be unforeseen delays?)

> In GNOME we have two closely related goals: to provide application developers with a clear vision of how apps should be built [that's often changing] and to provide users with a simple, easy to understand and logical experience [with lots of caveats and workarounds].

This section's goal of clear APIs is laudable, but its opening sentence just hangs out there like newspeak. It's at odds with its section and, really, the article as a whole.

(To be clear: I like change. Well-managed change is wonderful. Alas, "Yank it and write some wiki pages for 3rd party devs" is not well-managed change.)

> Many applications today use status icons as a notifications system, despite the existence of the official notifications API, for example.

This part is implying that a number of 3rd party developers are lazy or stupid. Dunno about that... Are you *sure* you understand why they've been reluctant to use the official notifications API?

> We also feel that the consequences of the change won’t be as dramatic as they would have been in the past.

Haha, the GNOME project has been pretty bad at judging how dramatic changes would be in the past, hasn't it? I wonder if things have improved any... (I'll take the under on this one. I predict that GNOME devs will be surprised at how many people are actually affected by this, and how difficult the workarounds described in this article will be in real life. But I do hope I'm wrong!)

> we have actually been using status icons as a crutch for far too long -- that they have been used to fill gaps in our APIs, gaps which are now thankfully getting filled...

Can you picture Allan Day as a physical therapist? He says to his patient on crutches: "You know what? We've been using this crutch far too long." YANK. CRASH. "Don't worry, you'll adjust soon. Most of your leg will heal in a year or two and the rest was obsolete so you won't need it anyway."

Maybe stabilize a solution first, _then_ delete the problem?

But no, alas. This article seems to say that the gameplan is to delete now, think later, and write lots of English to explain about how any pain is actually for the user's own good.

Which, when read in the right tone of voice, is very amusing!

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 2, 2017 17:35 UTC (Sat) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (24 responses)

So they know that it's not good — what are they using as a frame of reference for “good”? It isn't the solution that works for billions of people on a multitude of other DEs and OSes, because they're fleeing in the exact opposite direction. So is breaking things and giving the middle finger to interop standards good? It's hard to make sense out of this cult.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 5, 2017 9:09 UTC (Tue) by aigarius (subscriber, #7329) [Link] (23 responses)

It *does not* work for millions of people and they clearly describe how other platforms that try to keep such icons inevitably have to hide them again, destroying the whole purpose of the icons in the process.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 5, 2017 9:13 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (21 responses)

Icon tray works. You just need better ways to hide some of the unneeded icons. Windows got it right in Win XP, Mac OS X gets it right with additional software.

Heck, even Android now has an API to do persistent indicators.

Yet GNOME somehow got it totally wrong.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 5, 2017 14:22 UTC (Tue) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link] (20 responses)

Icon tray does not scale. Three icons give meaningful information at a glance. Five-seven icons might produce meaningful information at a glance. Anything more than that, and you end with a bunch of Blinkenlichten, just less useful than the original ones.

Add to this the fact, that many app developers consider status icons a way to enforce – and spread – the brand message, and that the icon images rarely follows design guidelines, and the thing becomes infuriating. (To wit: without bartender my work macbook has SIXTEEN status icons taking roughly one third of the top bar; of those I care only about three; four perhaps.)

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 5, 2017 14:23 UTC (Tue) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link]

*icon image rarely follows or *icon images rarely follow; grr.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 5, 2017 18:52 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (18 responses)

Well, screen space also doesn't scale. I can't display more than 20 applications at the same time. Let's remove all those pesky application windows and leave only the wallpaper and a nicely drawn "Shutdown" button.

I don't _want_ my icon tray to "scale". I'm fine with solution that allows me to have 2-5 indicators for applications chosen by me.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 6, 2017 9:46 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (17 responses)

>Well, screen space also doesn't scale. I can't display more than 20 applications at the same time.

And that's why virtual desktops were commonplace on X Windowing systems at least twenty years ago.

Gnome3 actually improves this paradigm with a dynamic stack-based approach.

> I don't _want_ my icon tray to "scale". I'm fine with solution that allows me to have 2-5 indicators for applications chosen by me.

That, by definition, is "scaling" compared to the overwhelming majority of desktops out there. (Note tha Linux is only a tiny fraction of those)

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 6, 2017 11:55 UTC (Wed) by ken (subscriber, #625) [Link] (14 responses)

> And that's why virtual desktops were commonplace on X Windowing systems at least twenty years ago.
> Gnome3 actually improves this paradigm with a dynamic stack-based approach.

the dynamic approach is not some sort of universal improvement. I have no idea what problem this solves and it makes using it a pain as you no longer can place windows in the workspace you want as that one may not exist yet.

and the decision to then only have worspaces on the primary display ??? unbelievable! I thought it was a bug until someone pointed out its was done on purpose.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 6, 2017 12:15 UTC (Wed) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (6 responses)

I always thought awesome's tag-based approach to virtual workspaces was pretty cool, clearly that isn't something that is going to be useful for non-technical people though. GNOME's implementation seems much more useful for them.

There is an extension for solving the primary display issue.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 6, 2017 20:51 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (5 responses)

While I appreciate the tag-based approach, it doesn't work for everyone. I use a fixed set of 9 workspaces (in XMonad) and have various amounts of monitors on my machines (1 for laptops, 2 at home, 3 at work). Generally, I have tmux on 1, browsers go from 9 on down, 5 is fixed, and temporary things grow from 2 on up. I then display 1, 9, and 5 on the three monitors up to the number of monitors. But this is why I use XMonad rather than any other window manager: I can make it do whatever I need it to do through a bit of code.

By the way, this works because my per-project workspaces tend to be realized through tmux sessions rather than X (or Wayland).

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 7, 2017 6:44 UTC (Thu) by karkhaz (subscriber, #99844) [Link] (4 responses)

Yeah, I keep wondering if/when tiling WMs are going to become more mainstream. Most of them solve _all_ the problems that _everyone_ in this thread is complaining about. But I suppose that folks in this thread already know/can find out how to fix these problems in GNOME, but are nevertheless complaining on behalf of less-competent users who would never change the defaults, so tiling window managers might not be so useful there either.

I have six monitors at work, and am using two of them for "per-project" workspaces that are chained together (i.e. when I press <Super-1>, one monitor jumps to workspace 1 and another jumps to workspace 11; <Super-2> changes to workspaces 2 and 12; etc). The other monitors either have a single workspace assigned to them, or (for my web browser monitor) I create and destroy workspaces dynamically. The workspaces on my browser monitor don't have a keyboard shortcut, since there are typically dozens of browser windows open that monitor (each on their own workspace), so I have a program that finds the titles of all of my browser windows, displays them in a dmenu, and whisks me to the workspace holding that browser window. Pure productivity bliss, not counting the millions of hours getting my setup to be this awesome. (Using the i3 window manager, but I'm sure any other tiling WM would work).

But the reason this works so well is that i3 has barely changed its default behaviour since the project started almost a decade ago. The project is mostly adding new features (like workspace saving and configuration options) and fixing bugs.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 7, 2017 7:05 UTC (Thu) by jem (subscriber, #24231) [Link] (3 responses)

> Yeah, I keep wondering if/when tiling WMs are going to become more mainstream. Most of them solve _all_ the problems that _everyone_ in this thread is complaining about.

Tiling window managers are not for everyone. If you value portability in a laptop, then you'll have to compromise on screen size. With a small screen you end up switching between full screen windows.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 7, 2017 9:48 UTC (Thu) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link] (1 responses)

Why choose one or another when you can have both in gnome-shell? :-)

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 7, 2017 9:59 UTC (Thu) by karkhaz (subscriber, #99844) [Link]

Or in i3 :) I do also have a tiny laptop (which looks hilarious next to my 6-monitor workstation) and use it mostly the way jem describes: one window per workspace, each one taking up the whole screen. But I do have uses for multiple small windows on one workspace, even with a tiny screen.

It's convenient for me because I can use almost all the same keybindings as on my workstation, although I do see that this is a less compelling argument for folks who only use a laptop---which seems to be more and more people nowadays.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 7, 2017 12:48 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

I've used this setup since early 2010 from an eeePC to the triple monitor workstation. But, the keybindings are also very custom, so using anything else usually forces me to a mouse for more than basic things anyways.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 6, 2017 12:37 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> the dynamic approach is not some sort of universal improvement. I have no idea what problem this solves and it makes using it a pain as you no longer can place windows in the workspace you want as that one may not exist yet.

The dynamic approach maps to the way I've always worked -- one desktop per active project. I'm immeasurably more productive with it as it maps to my mental model better than static workspaces. This isn't just my wearing rose-colored glasses either; I'm forced to use a G2-based system at $dayjob, and it's like night and day vs my G3-based personal laptop.

So while I'm not going to claim that the G3 approach is necessarily better for everyone -- yet, for many folks, the G3 approach is vastly superior. (And for those who don't like it, it can be disabled in favor of a static set)

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 6, 2017 13:33 UTC (Wed) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link] (5 responses)

> and the decision to then only have worspaces on the primary display ??? unbelievable! I thought it was a bug until someone pointed out its was done on purpose.

On the contrary, that's one of the best features . I put a browser on the secondary (fixed) display and use the primary display workspaces for different types of work. These days you _always_ need a browser available and it's an incredible productivity-killer to have to jump back and forth between workspaces to use it. I can't work well without it anymore.

And of course, if you really don't want it you can disable it as has been pointed out: same with dynamic workspaces (I personally DO disable that and set a static number of workspaces).

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 6, 2017 15:46 UTC (Wed) by ken (subscriber, #625) [Link] (4 responses)

> On the contrary, that's one of the best features

no its not. its simply wrong. the correct way would be to have all display be part of the workspace and if you wanted to lock some application to be always visible on one display you would simply have an option in the window menu to set it to always display.

then you can have your way of working and everyone else has a sane default and most importantly no need to go in and change some global state for anybody.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 6, 2017 20:48 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

No, that's wrong too ;) . It's better to have N workspaces, each monitor displaying one of them. I never really liked the "all monitors change workspaces together" and I don't think I'd like the workspaces/fixed duality either.

Workspaces

Posted Sep 6, 2017 21:07 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

The nice thing is that, if you want that behavior in GNOME, it's a simple configuration tweak away. I agree that having only one display participate in workspaces is weird, but I am happy to flip a switch and get something more usable for me. Everybody should of course set their defaults in a way that pleases me, but I've long since given up on convincing the world of that.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 8, 2017 2:36 UTC (Fri) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link] (1 responses)

> no its not. its simply wrong. the correct way would be to have all display be part of the workspace and if you wanted to lock some application to be always visible on one display you would simply have an option in the window menu to set it to always display.

No. That's clearly the wrong way to do it. The way GNOME 3 does it is definitely superior.

One of the reasons people don't use multiple workspaces is that it's annoying to have to switch around between workspaces to find things, for cut and paste etc. Having a screen locked means that if you want things to stay always visible you just move things to that screen. This is trivially easy to use and easy to understand for even the least experienced desktop user. You don't even need documentation: it's obvious how it works immediately.

GNOME _does_ have an option in the window menu to set the window to always display, but asking people to figure out how to do it then making them do it every time they open the window is too complicated and annoying. If you learn enough to figure out how to pin a window to the screen, then you're certainly capable of figuring out how to disable the locked screen feature if you don't want it.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 15, 2017 5:24 UTC (Fri) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

>The way GNOME 3 does it is definitely superior.
E17 got this (and so many other things) right, the right way: each screen has independent workspace layouts and switching.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 6, 2017 17:34 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

> And that's why virtual desktops were commonplace on X Windowing systems at least twenty years ago.
And that's why Windows added ability to hide tray icons. Duh.

> That, by definition, is "scaling" compared to the overwhelming majority of desktops out there. (Note tha Linux is only a tiny fraction of those)
Windows supports tray management SINCE FREAKING WINDOWS 2000!!

Every, literally, every other desktop has some kind of tray/menubar indicators: Mac OS X, Android, Windows, iOS (though it's restricted there). Yet GNOME in its great wisdom decided that users don't need them. Facepalm.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 6, 2017 19:36 UTC (Wed) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link]

Did I already mention the Bartender app? I think I did. That's how you solve the status icon problem on Mac.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 7, 2017 16:40 UTC (Thu) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

>It *does not* work for millions of people
Millions of people chose GNOME 3 because a standard feature of other platforms, that many apps expect to be there, is badly implemented and now due to be removed entirely? Somehow I doubt that.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 2, 2017 20:55 UTC (Sat) by sramkrishna (subscriber, #72628) [Link]

Most people have already switched to topicons for notification trays because the one that is built into GNOME isn't that great. In fact, I would say it actively hides the notification areas and has actually trained me to ignore them!